There are some GREAT fights lined up for June, but first a quick recap of May’s action in the squared circle.
Without a doubt, the top story of the month was Dimitry Bivol’s complete domination of P4P champ Saul “Canelo” Alvarez for a light heavyweight belt. This one wasn’t even close so don’t let the rigged scorecards fool you. In fact, I think Bivol could have finished Saul if he had chosen to, but did the right thing to maintain distance and not take the chance of getting hit with a lucky shot late in the fight.
As shocking as this result seems to the layman, in retrospect lots of folks kind of saw it coming. Kind of. I remember listening to the excellent Big Fight Weekend Podcast preview and the hosts were saying, “Bivol is much bigger, younger, has a punishing jab that will give Canelo huge problems, he won’t get rattled..” But when it came time to make predictions..”Alverez will figure something out, he always does…”
My thought was: these guys don’t realize they are actually picking Bivol in every way except the final prediction.
Now having said that, Canelo deserves HUGE props for jumping in weight class (again) to try and add another strap to his hall of fame collection. I think it is completely unfair for folks to drop him in their P4P rankings while we all clamor for more competitive fights. Saul could have easily white-washed some tomato can at 168 where he is undisputed and we all would have raved about how awesome he is. Instead, he took the highest risk, lowest reward fight possible and he lost for just the 2nd time in his career. Still #1 on my list. Now onto GGG in the fall.
I promised Jermell Charlo vs Brian Castano would be a barnburner and it did not disappoint. It was the closest you could get to Rocky 2 in a real fight. Jermell showed major guts holding off the ever-charging Castano to win by KO. This Charlo twin is now undisputed and he is officially a bad man. Put him on the P4P list along with Apollo Creed. And hats off to Castano, too. What a warrior. Watch this!
Also Jaron Ennis looked amazing as usual and Gevonta Davis made me look smart on Twitter as I offered the following advice: “Do not buy the Davis v Romero PPV. Take the $75 you saved and bet it on Davis to win by KO. Saves you time and you make easy money.”
Let’s hope Gevonta gets a real opponent in the very near future.
June Has Some HUGE fights.
Saturday June 4th Devin Haney and “Ferocious” George Kambosos fight to unify middleweight titles in front of 60,000 liqored Aussies in George’s hometown of Melbourne, Australia. This one IS ON REGULAR ESPN and ring walks should be around 11:30 pm EST USA. The spectacle alone will be worth the price of admission. Which also happens to be free.
Kambosos shocked the world to win belts off Teofimo Lopez and deserves all the credit for doing so, but Lopez was an absolute mess of personal and physical problems heading into that fight. Devin Haney is super-skilled and laser-focused. He will be playing the heel but i expected him to send the saucy aussies home to cry in their Foster oil cans. If I had to bet, I’d say by majority decision. Certainly one judge will be rigged for the hometown guy.
ATTENTION: FIGHT OF THE YEAR FAVORITE CANDIDATE.
Hell, make it a fight of the decade candidate. The first time Nayou “The Monster” Inoue and Nonito Donaire met it was an absolute war. I’m not sure absolute war does it justice. That’s like describing the Eastern Front of WWII. Their first fight was much more destructive. How so? Donaire broke Inoue’s orbital bone in the 2nd round and the fight went the distance with Inoue coming out on top.
Over two years later, these two maniacs are back at it on Tuesday June 7th with three belts at 118 pounds on the line. As before, the fight is in Japan so the ring walk on ESPN+ should be around 7:30 am EST. I might take the morning off from the coffee shop. Inoue will once again be a sizable favorite over the cagey veteran Donaire but I can promise you nobody is taking shit from anybody. I guess I’ll take Inoue with a 10th round TKO, but if I had to bet my savings I’d put it all on…..PAIN.
Saturday June 18th from NYC: Artur Beterbiev vs. Joe Smith Jr., 12 rounds, for Beterbiev's WBC and IBF light heavyweight titles and Smith's WBO light heavyweight title
Union man and the pride of Long Island USA, Joe Smith will have his hands more than full with a banger like Beterbiev. No way this thing goes the distance and if Artur wins as expected, it sets up a huge unification fight against fellow Russkie Dmitry Bivol before the end of the year. Too bad these two guys can’t help Russia beat Ukraine. Looks like they could use the help. Loma is probably defeating an entire red division single-handidly as I write this. Still, Smith can crack and the hometown crowd will be in his corner. This will be a fun one.
Deep Dive.
As you can see from the title of the blog, I’m no boxing expert. Just a huge fan who tries to boil things down to the basics so I might have some friends who will actually talk boxing with me. So while the following card on June 25 from San Antonio, Texas doesn’t have any household names, I’ve heard it’s an exceptionally interesting night of boxing and I will investigate more as it moves closer. I encourage you to do the same. I believe it’s on Showtime. Or maybe DAZN. It’s somewhere.
Title fight: Murodjon Akhmadaliev vs. Ronny Rios, 12 rounds, for Akhmadaliev's IBF junior featherweight title and WBA "super" junior featherweight title.
Title fight: Jesse Rodriguez Franco vs. Srisaket Sor Rungvisai, 12 rounds, for Rodriguez's WBC junior bantamweight title.
Title fight: Julio Cesar Martinez vs. McWilliams Arroyo, 12 rounds, for Martinez's WBC flyweight title.
If you would like to cover boxing for Pencilstorm, please send an email to pencilstormstory@gmail.com. In the meantime, I’ll keep holding it down myself. It’s been a while since Sweet Science was worth writing about but the month of June is shaping up to be a good one. I’ll give you a quick overview of what’s what, but for real coverage check out the podcast Boxing with Chris Mannix (every Friday) and follow @danrafael1 on twitter and subscribe to his newsletter on substack.